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They Sing, They Sing
All women love dance in a dying light—
the moon’s my mother: how I love the moon!
Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one,
then settles back to shade and the long night.
. . .
Who thought love but a motion in the mind?
Am I but nothing leaning toward a thing?
I’ll scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing;
descend, O gentlest light, descend, descend.
O sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds,
they sing, they sing, but till in minor thirds.
I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone:
what’s seen recedes; forever’s what we know!—
eternity defined, and strewn with straw,
the fury of the slug beneath the stone.
the vision moves, and yet remains the same.
—Thedore Roethke
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